The New Beachhutman Blog

I spent a large part of yesterday trying to redesign the "Wall Game" for 2008. Long established readers will recall that last year we dreamed up a "game" for about 65 managers to play on the Great Wall of China, as a sort of justification for the trip out to the wall.  The game was not an unalloyed success, in part because they were tired and tetchy after a camp out and an early start, and in part because it was easier than we expected. This one will be fiendish.

We had planned to use a Chinese poem as the core of the game.

Chinese poetry has long been regarded with great national affection as the number one literary genre in China. It is even admired by those who clearly never read another word of it after the compulsory poems that they were taught in their schools. It trades greatly on of the concentrated meanings of the Chinese script, making it almost impossible to translate. Like the popular yeast-based sandwich spread, Westerners either love it or hate it.

Delving in the Book of Change,

I rose through hardship great,

And desperately fought the foe for four long years;

Like willow catkin,

the war-torn land looks desolate,

I sink or swim as duckweed in the rain appears.

For perils on Perilous Beach, I heaved and sighed,

On Lonely Sea now, I feel dreary and lonely;

Since olden days, which man has lived and not died?

I'll leave a loyalist name in history!

Wen TianXiang, translated by Xu YuanZhong

Great stuff, eh?